The City of College Station, in response to pressure from citizens to protect their neighborhoods from a host of perceived threats including, students, McMansions, urban decay, loss of historical significance, fear of chickens, etc., has made available various types of overlays aimed at helping deal with these issues.
One of the first proposed overlays comes before City Council this Thursday night. Though the College Hills overlay seems fairly innocuous, it has raised the ire of at least one couple in the neighborhood who has turned this into a campaign on property rights. I will be the first to admit that overlays can go too far and incur unintended consequences. Like many neighborhood covenants, some overlays seek to dictate paint color and outlaw solar panels. But most overlays seem to do what they are intended to. And that seems to be the case with the College Hills overlay. The city staff was diligent, as they always are, in engaging neighbors in this process.
Unfortunately, some were not content with the outcome and now seek to make this an ideological issue. Even if you do not live in the in the part of the College Hills neighborhood effected by this overlay, you may want to pay attention to this issue, or even show up to the City Council meeting to be heard. Overlays are a potentially useful tool in helping us determine the look and feel of our neighborhoods and by extension of our city. If this overlay is defeated by an ideology that does not consider the legitimacy of community rights and neighborhood integrity this tool will, for all intents and purposes, be eliminated. Then when your neighborhood faces threats you will be left with little protection.
The most important ingredient in developing a community’s quality of life is citizen involvement. Show up and get involved.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Property Rights vs. Community Rights
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
The right only supports property rights until somebody wants to build something they don't like. For example, a mosque.
Linda Causey (in case the Google sign in doesn't work)
Try living in a National Landmark!
Hugh,
While I respect your take on this matter, I think you are under-stating the "opposition" to this measure, as well as the reasonableness of such a view. I'll address the latter first.
While the community certainly has positive, public rights to be protected – cleanliness, quiet, and a general respect for property values that rentals and the like can degrade - there are also homeowner property rights at play that, importantly, do not conflict with these community rights.
As you know, one section of the overlay would restrict a homeowner's ability to increase the coverage on their lot (whether an in-ground pool, porch, driveway, garage, or the home itself) to the "median percentage" for a given block-facing. Let's say, for example, Ashburn.
Ashburn is lined with very large lots, perhaps an acre to two acres in size. These are often heavily wooded and the homes, with improvements, do not generally cover much of the lots. Let's say for example's sake that the median of lot coverage on Ashburn is 15%.
If you're at 15% or higher, you then must seek a variance to do anything that would increase your coverage - even, technically, if that coverage would be completely shielded from the rest of the neighborhood.
In effect, that we are telling half of the neighborhood that they cannot build anything else on their property without having city approval (I assume through the ZBA). We're telling the other half they can only improve their property to a given point.
Clearly, we are over-reaching here. If the purpose of this ordinance is to preserve neighborhood integrity and the character of this area, then it should only take care of those things which actually have an effect on the rest of the neighborhood - the building of certain visible structures, for example, or the paving of a front yard, or putting bright floodlights on the garage.
But restricting someone from improving their home in their own backyard, where nobody else will be affected? Come now. That's simply unreasonable.
The second thing worth mentioning is indeed the "opposition" to this measure, which raises good points for discussion.
Foremost in my mind, and beyond the issues relating to the overlay itself, is the idea that some of these individuals feel they were misled or told things that are not so. The city, by my understanding, tenders letters to the petitioners, who are then responsible for sending those to the neighbors. I have personally heard from several neighbors who never received such notice.
Furthermore, I have also heard tales of questions being asked ("Can I do this-or-this with my home after the overlay") that were improperly answered, leading to a signature of a homeowner who thought they were supporting something different.
I do not lay blame at the feet of the petitioners for any of this. However, I simply do not know what process occurred because we do not really regulate the petition process for overlays (as we do for intiatives and so-forth). Shouldn't we treat overlay petitions just as seriously as we treat any other petition that can change laws in our town? It is disturbing to think that there even could have been some folks who weren't told correctly what they were signing.
Finally, and as someone who believes in building coalitions of agreement between disagreeing individuals (based on my previous readings of some of your past writing), I think you should be able to agree with me that a 50%+1 majority is hardly sufficient for something as significant as an overlay. We need to, in my opinion, change this to reflect that a larger percentage of the neighborhood desires to have such restrictions placed upon them, in order so as to protect the minority of property owners who might disagree with the majority.
Thanks for reading this. Perhaps we can have a conversation about such things sometime.
Thanks and God Bless,
Jess Fields.
Post a Comment